In the high-tech hothouse of Silicon Valley where the leafy streets are lined with temples to Microsoft, Apple and Google, one establishment seems distinctly out of place.

Moffett Airfield is a relic of another era, three vast hangars stark reminders of a time when people took to the skies in airships, travelling across San Francisco Bay at a sedate 80kmh.

Today these lighter-than-air leviathans have long since sailed off into the sunset, but the dream still lives on in the form of a replica Zeppelin that takes tourists for a trip down memory lane.

As they float over the sprawling airfield, where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin park their personal Boeing 767, they are most likely unaware of an extraordinary odyssey taking place right below them.

Nestled alongside Hangar One, a gargantuan structure that covers an area the size of six football fields, is a modest building housing an elite organisation known as the Singularity University.

Its here that some of the worlds best and brightest minds, including two young New Zealanders, have been on a quest to find the Holy Grail immortality.

Brothers Luke and David Hutchison from Auckland were two of just 120 scientists worldwide selected to take part in cutting edge research into nano-technology the science of manipulating atoms to build microscopic structures.

Luke says it has profound implications for humankind.

If you lose an arm we should be able to trigger some growth factors where the arm used to be and you should be able to regrow a new arm.

If you have congestive heart failure we should be able to grow a second heart in your chest cavity and then cut out the old one, rather than transplants. So you grow from your own tissues.

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Never say die - the quest for immortality